No one's talked about FF1 yet so I will talk about FF1 now. What I like about it are all things games don't do anymore, and I don't mean that in a retro-****y way. There's something about a game that's full of conscious decisions that... get the job done, but are not the first thing you'd expect. It plays out like a schizophrenic game of dungeons & dragons run by a DM who didn't do nearly enough worldbuilding before the game started and whose notes keep getting eaten by his dog. There are many many many subplots and objectives that don't connect together, with a long chain of them going on before you even get to doing anything directly related to the main plot. Even during the main plot, it's like, something about vampires... something to do with mermaids... some mermaids who are disguised as humans and are foot fetishists... a guy who kidnapped a fairy... and guess what there's an entire dungeon and a community of dragons who only exist to frame the class upgrade, which is itself completely disconnected from the main story and in fact 100% optional. But what IS required is to go to a little ice cave lost in a maze of canals in the mountains to get a rock from a treasure chest, take that to the middle of the desert on the other side of the continent so it triggers a flying boat to ride out of the ground, because half the map doesn't have any parking for your water boat.
The GBA version is reasonably balanced so that you don't have to be crazy to enjoy it (after a bumpy beginning), but yeah, totally primitive directionless whatever-ness in lieu of brooding antiheroes with tragic pasts and hunger for revenge and playable characters dying and taking all your equipment with them.